The film, with Newman's riveting performance, is an exceptional portrait of an oddball politician who is equal parts scoundrel and folk hero, wielding power with a quirky, almost cantankerous charm, while also pulling strings in a loyal and powerful Southern political machine. [13 Dec 1989, p.E1]

Significantly, this hyper-stylization of 300 is limited to its visuals. The performances are played straight, and this combination -- straight performances and stylized visuals -- produces an uncanny effect.

Smile 2, filmmaker Parker Finn’s audacious follow-up to his 2022 breakout hit, “Smile,” delivers all the jump scares, gore and supernaturally plastered-on grins a horror fan can take while also commenting, thoughtfully yet also disgustingly, on the perils of fame.

This is a movie you might want to talk about afterward, so try to see it with other people.

Brad Pitt is in ecstasy here, despite the cool demeanor throughout. This is an actor who is never better and never happier than when he gets to be seedy, slick his hair back and wear a leather jacket.

An entertaining film. Few will agree with every word spoken, but Chomsky’s vision of history is worth encountering and considering.

Not a great picture but an entirely entertaining one. [02 Nov 2008, p.N34]

Thoroughly engrossing.

The whole thing is held together by the nuanced and natural performance of the amazing Regina Casé, the veteran Brazilian comedian and TV host, who can switch her look at a moment’s notice from cherub to aggrieved saint to basset hound.

Watch Infamous on its own. It's a worthy film in its own right, with its own virtues.

Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick’s tense, insightful directing debut, re-centers the narrative on Alcala’s victims and the rampant misogyny that suffused the 1970s.

One of the charms of The Red Turtle is a chance to savor the joys of clean and simple animation suggestive of the old hand-drawn school, which is part of what makes the film, a quiet, humanistic fable, one of the best of its kind in memory.

Infectiously energetic.

Breillat is inviting us to really look at sex as it occurs in life, and to engage with it mentally, as a driving mystery of human existence.

Ambles along and has a feeling of randomness about it, but, in fact, it's tightly plotted. Every moment, however seemingly haphazard and casually presented, is keyed to the progress of a young man from lost to not so lost.

It’s refreshing to see a film that not only spotlights a queer Asian American woman but also treats her with such respect and tenderness.

Succeeds by placing us in an interesting world with characters who are impossible not to root for.

This whole concept is a rich vein for gags, especially with a comic as at-home with herself as Schumer. But there’s something sweet and wise about it, too.

This was obviously a labor of love for Soderbergh, and a fitting memorial to the artist.

Neighbors is funny for all 96 of its minutes, not counting the credits, and it contains the single best sight gag of the year so far. (We're talking laugh-out-loud funny and then laugh again later, just thinking about it.)

Hook never reaches Nirvana. It doesn't grab the audience, fling it into another world and make people forget where they parked their cars. But it does leave the viewer with a glow, and along the way it has magical moments, even if it's not fully magical as a whole. [11 Dec. 1991, p.E1]

Bill W., an admirable, illuminating film about the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, is pretty much like the man himself: solid, sometimes flawed and seriously unflashy.

A curious thing about "Revenge" is that auto executives who might have been portrayed as villains in Paine's earlier documentary are likable characters here.

Spike Lee is too passionate and distinctive a film maker to make a lousy movie. So although Mo' Better Blues, his latest, is a misfire, there is a personality behind every camera shot. An audience is willing to go farther down the road with Lee than with another film maker, and even when, as in this case, the road leads nowhere, it's hard to resent the trip. [03 Aug 1990, p.E1]

The limits of Dallas Buyers Club are the limits most true stories come up against, which are the facts. A good story lands and reverberates. In real life, stories have a way of just stopping and leaving you a bit unsatisfied. The latter is what happens in this movie, but perhaps that couldn't be avoided.

It eschews obvious effects, but even more impressively, it tells a story without an obvious moral. It assumes that kids can wrestle with a fairly complicated narrative and draw their own conclusions.

A liberating experience.

Celebrates the craft of acting both in its story and in fine performances.